Rosa's Birthday

Chapter 10

Carlo Gatti stepped out of his shop in Hungerford Market to
glance at the clock in the Great Hall. 5 o'clock. Time he took Rosa down to
Lambeth for her birthday treat at Uncle Agostino's. He took off his white apron
and hung it on a peg near the door. It had been quite a busy day with several
new customers coming in. The three-cornered puffs and the rhubarb tarts had
gone well and there was plenty of gingerbread and fruit cake left. You had to
go carefully with English families, they were slow to take to some of his
"foreign specialities". But the griddle cakes and ring doughnuts he cooked at
the counter had sold quickly enough just as had Battista's chocolates.

"Rosa." His daughter came running, her little shawl already
round her shoulders. "Where's Ragazzo?" "Here, Signore." "Giovanni,"
the shop boy jumped, "You.'re in charge. Be back around 8, in case you get busy
again."

Taking a covered basket in one hand and Rosa in the other, Carlo
turned out of the shop into the Great Hall. It was calm and quiet now and once
again he was able to appreciate the elegant building. Ragazzo was quite
overawed by the hall with its collonades and glass roof. It was the biggest
building he'd ever been in.

They walked out of the Great Hall and down a wide flight of
steps. In front of them lay a second great quadrangle open to the sky and
beyond that you could see the Thames and a quay where the fishing boats tied up
to unload their catch. This was the fish market where fishmongers had their
shops or stalls. But fishmongers start early and finish early so the quadrangle
was almost completely deserted, swept clean by the sweepers except for the
glint of fish scales on the pavement and a fishy smell which always lingered
there.

They mounted some steps to the footbridge over the river. As
they approached the toll house a thin young woman stepped out to meet them. She
had a large tray hung around her neck, with a few toys strewn on it, miniature
pots and pans, a paper house, a Chinese roarer and stuck in the side of the
tray a couple of windmills which clacked round as the breeze from the river
caught them. "Papa, please may I have a windmill - please?" said Rosa.
Carlo nodded to the young woman who bent to give it to the child, but as
she straightened up to receive his penny the look of relief and gratitude
caught at his heart. The early~lined face, the poverty of her dress, the
fewness of her toys took him back to his early days in London, when earning a
penny meant at least that you would eat that day. He lent on the rail, looking
out to the river, remembering his life twenty years before.

With only a few coins in his pocket he had come to London after
a stand-up row with his brothers, those prosperous greengrocers in Paris. He
had never fitted in there. Carlo with his country ways and his bad debts, was
to them a never do well they could well do without. And so it seemed to Carlo
they might be right as he wandered friendless in the streets of London.

Sleeping rough for some nights he had, by happy chance, met a
street musician, a distant cousin who had left his native Dongio many years
earlier. He and his two sons were rough fellows but Carlo found them good
enough company and was grateful to them when they offered him a bed in the
house they lodged in.

He slept, one of ten, in a tiny room of a run-down house in
Saffron Court. He had seen poverty all his life in the Ticino, known hunger in
his village, but he had never experienced the misery and squalor of this part
of London. It was impossible to keep clean. A thousand chimneys poured sooty
fumes in the air. The alleyways were full of refuse, the streets full of horse
dung. Everywhere the stench was overpowering.

Speaking little English, he found it difficult to find a job. No
one cared for foreigners and soon he was forced out as a street-seller selling
chestnuts. It was a wry turn of events. Carlo Gatti, whose father and brothers
had supplied many of the chestnut sellers in Paris, was now to find himself in
their place. Hiring a barrow for 3 pence, buying half a peck of chestnuts and
begging some charcoal, he set out one evening to the nearest market in Leather
Lane, the sweet aroma of the cooking chestnuts making his own stomach turn over
with hunger. In England as in France every streetseller had his or her own cry
and a kindly old man in the household told him what to shout. "'ot chestnuts,
penna score." Repeating this over and over again he set off. "'ot chestnuts,
penna score. . . . "

The noise of the market was deafening. There were fruit and
vegetable stalls, fish stalls, old clothes, crockery, pots and pans; there were
cobblers and butchers all shouting and displaying their wares. Added to this
were the street sellers and crowds of children who darted in and out, here one
with a bunch of onions, another with a basket of cresses, begging for custom.

Pushing his barrow through the crowded alleyways he could find
nowhere to put it down and Carlo found himself forced out into the comparative
calm of Holborn Hill. Here in spite of his cries, people passed him by. In the
distance though he heard music, laughter and shouts and as he drew near he saw
that one of the shops had been turned into a temporary theatre. Coloured lamps
and gaudy-looking pictures were hung up over the entrance and standing around,
evidently waiting to go in, were a crowd of young people.

Stationing himself near the door he began to shout. Immediately
he was surrounded by a gang of urchins whose eager fingers would have filched
his whole stock of chestnuts if he hadn't kept close guard.

"Varda che ti chiappi," he shouted, and recognising he was not
English they set up a clamour. "Itie, Itie," they chanted and after one
had received Carlo's cuff on the ear they retreated a little way to shout
"Where's your monkey, where's your monkey?" "0t chestnuts, penna score,"
he shouted and immediately they mocked him, imitating his broken English to
perfection.

Just as his anger was rising, the door of the theatre opened and
a crowd of poor people began to stream out into the street. "'ot
chestnuts, penna score. 'ot chestnuts, penna score." In a few minutes he
was doing a brisk trade. There was pushing and laughter and someone said "He's
a right Charlie, he's giving them away."

The girls held out their shawls and the boys their caps.
"Here you're selling me short. Penny a score you said. You can't count, I want
my twenty ... 17, 18, 19, 20. That's it." Too late, Carlo realised that a
score meant twenty and that this was more than they normally got from other
barrows. That old man had been wrong. But there was no going back now. A father
took two lots for his children, and they received them gleefully. "He's a
foreigner, doesn't understand poor fellow," he said.

Gradually the crowd dissolved. A new show had begun, drawing in
the audience. The street emptied, the well-satisfied customers went on their
way, leaving Carlo his stock of chestnuts sold but sold at a loss! It was a
mistake he was never to make again.

"Papa, papa. Come on, come on." Rosa's insistence broke through
his thoughts. She had tired of running up and down the windmill. He turned and
saw Ragazzo watching him. "You are sad. Signore?" "No, Ragazzo, no." He
straightened up. "But that young woman, so thin, so pale. I can still remember
what it is like to be poor and hungry." He smiled at Ragazzo. "Come on now.
Rosa, give Ragazzo a turn with the windmill and I'll carry you over the
bridge." So, paying the twopenny toll, he picked her up and they set off over
the bridge to Lambeth, the breeze turning the windmill clacking round as fast
as it would go.

They turned into Bridge Road towards Cousin Agostino's shop. A G
Gatti. Artificial Florists and Plumasiers it said grandly over the door. With a
nod to the shop assistant, Carlo led them upstairs.

A flood of dialect greeted them. Agostino's wife, Guilia, and
little Mary, Cousin Clara from Paris with Eugenia, Uncle Francesco Marioni from
his cafe down the road and Maria, who had come over by bus with the baby. Carlo
had brought drinking chocolate and the traditional amaretta, tiny almond cakes
and Battista's present, a large chocolate cake with Rosa's name on it. And
Maria had brought the doll. "Che stravaganza - unbelievable extravagance,"
Maria had called it when he showed her the doll he had bought in the Lowther
Arcade. "What does the child want with such luxury? You could have got
something in the market."

Rosa was enchanted with it all. At once she became the centre of
attention and as Maria helped her to unwrap the doll, her excitement was
intense. Freed from its paper, she held it up, a doll dressed exactly like a
little English girl. She laid her in the crook of her arm.

Watching from a corner of the room, Ragazzo felt choked. He was
happy for Rosa for he was fond of her, but amongst all these people he felt so
alone.

Once again he wished with all his heart he had a family like
this. To have a father, mother, sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles - to
know who he was and where he belonged. Oh yes, the Gattis were kind,
particularly Signor Carlo, but the Signora never let him forget he was just a
serving boy.

Would he, he wondered, ever have a birthday - a birthday like
this one.

"Look Rag, isn't she beautiful?" Rosa held up her doll, almost
pushing her into his face. "Mama says she was much too expensive, but I like
her. I'm going to call her Guilia. Did you have some of my birthday cake?"
Ragazzo shook his head. "Come on," she began to drag him across the room.
"Mama, Mama, Rag must have some cake."